Marino, Bowden, Beuerlein

September 11, 1988|The Morning Call

Wire shorts

- Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino has already thrown more touchdown passes than half the quarterbacks in the Professional Football Hall of Fame. - A colt named Friendly Ed, which races on West Coast tracks, is owned by Ed Friendly. - Florida State football coach BobbyBowden likes orange soda and peanuts, so he pours his peanuts into a bottle of orange soda. This way he can drink the orange soda and chew the peanuts with one swig. - Players ask for all kinds of extras in their negotiations. Mark Duper asked Dolphins owner Joe Robbie for 100 Super Bowl tickets. Robbie said no. - Los Angeles Raiders quarterback Steve Beuerlein was six years old when just-retired Raiders signal caller Jim Plunkett threw his first NFL pass.

- Now that Joe Morgan got his salary hiked - from $45,000 as a Boston Red Sox coach to $190,000 as the Sox manager - he'll give up his wintertime employment, driving a snowplow for the Massachusetts highway department.

- Bill "Spaceman" Lee, the former Red Sox free thinker, pitched in three semi-pro leagues this summer, in Wisconsin, Vermont and Nova Scotia.

- People laughed at Eddie Edwards, the inept bespectacled British skier at the Winter Olympics, but now he has signed $700,000 in endorsements and is chuckling all the way to the you-know-where.

- One of the axioms in the National Football League seems to be that the Phoenix Cardinals draft poorly. It needed defensive help and of six defensive draft picks, first-round linebacker Ken Harvey made the team as a backup. Another, fourth-round defensive back Mike Brim, is on the injured reserve list. The rest are gone.

- The price of courtside seats at Atlanta Hawks basketball games will rise from $50 to $75 this season. The best seats for Orlando Magic games will cost $125 - and there is a waiting list.

- For security reasons, Korean Air Lines is not letting passengers carry batteries onto flights to Seoul. If a sports writer takes a lap-top computer to the Olympics and wishes to keep the batteries in the machine during the flight, they must receive written permission from the airline. Officials worry about bomb components.

- Minnesota hangs onto the American League attendance lead and expects to draw 2.5 million. In 1983, the second year of the Metrodome, they drew 858,939.

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Dear Abe, I have never heard of any high school athlete to be able to get 12 varsity letters until I read about Cari-Lynn Piotrowski for Central Catholic. How many other males and females from around the area have received 12 varsity letters in high school.

Liz Lipko

Cari-Lynn is not unique. Many, many male and female athletes have been awarded 12 or more varsity letters.

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Abe, was there ever an instance where a major league umpire worked the World Series, then wound up in the Super Bowl as an official?

Mark Crowley, Allentown

Not that I can find. I think you are thinking of Charlie Berry, but he didn't officiate a Super Bowl. Berry umpired the 1950 and 1954 World Series and refereed the 1955 National Football League title game between the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns.

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Abe, I hope you can figure out this for us. It involves a scoring problem in baseball. How does a pitcher get a save?

Please run this in your Sunday column.

Eric Case, Kutztown

To be credited with a save, the pitcher must be the finishing pitcher, not the winning pitcher. Other requirements are: he enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches at least one inning; enters the game with the potential tying run either on base, at bat, or on deck; or pitches effectively for at least three innings.

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Ask Abe, I watched this on a Game of the Week and could not believe what happened.

It was the last of the ninth, the game was tied at 3-3, and runners were on second and third. The batter swung and hit a liner to left that cleared the fence on one bounce.

Both runners easily scored, but the batter was credited with just one RBI. Could this be right?

Michael D., Allentown

If the ball bounced over the outfield fence, the batter is given just one RBI. The batter is credited with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scored the winning run.

The rule even applies when the batter would normally be credited with a ground rule double. But, a home run stands as long as the batter circles the bases.